Dodgers prospects

Five Dodgers prospects crack MLB’s Top 100

Lux comes in at No. 2

By Blake Harris@BlakeHarrisTBLA Oct 1, 2019, 1:00pm PDT

MLB: Colorado Rockies at Los Angeles Dodgers

With the Major League Baseball regular season over, we looked back at MLB.com’s list of the Top 100 prospects heading into the 2020 season. The Dodgers, to no surprise, come in near the top, having five prospects crack the list. Gavin Lux (No. 2), Dustin May (No. 33), Keibert Ruiz (No. 34), Josiah Gray (No. 76), and Jeter Downs (No. 88) were the Dodgers players that were represented.

Lux, who is currently with the big-league team, comes in as the second best prospect in all of baseball. He was arguably one of the best hitters in all of the minor-leagues this year, hitting .347 with 26 home runs in 113 combined games. He really put his name on the map during his tenure in Oklahoma City. In his 49 games with the Dodgers, he hit .392/.478/.719/1.197 with 13 homers and 39 RBI.

Earlier this month, he was named the Branch Rickey Minor League Player of the Year.

Coming up next on the list is May. He spent 2019 with Tulsa and Oklahoma City, starting a combined 20 games. On the year, he went 6-5 with a 3.38 ERA and 1.13 WHIP. In 106 ²⁄₃ innings, he struck out 110 and walked 29. He actually performed better in Oklahoma City with the juiced balls, where he posted a 2.30 ERA and held opponents to a .212 average.

Right behind him is Ruiz, who is the first player on the list to not crack the major-league roster yet. Once LA’s No. 1 prospect, Ruiz finds himself at the No. 3 spot heading into next season. He struggled during his tenure with the Tulsa Drillers, hitting only .254 with a .659 OPS. It was the first time he had an OPS under .700 in a season, and the second time he was hitting under .300. Luckily, things seemed to change for him when he was promoted to Oklahoma City. Though his time there was brief, only appearing in nine games, he hit .316 with a .824 OPS. He also hit two homers, compared to the four he hit in 76 games in Tulsa.

Cracking the Top 100 for the first time is Gray, who was awarded the Branch Rickey Minor League Pitcher of the Year earlier this week. Unlike most of these prospects, Gray, 21, isn’t homegrown. He was acquired last December in the trade that sent Yasiel Puig and others to the Reds.

He pitched in three different levels, and dominated in each stop. He began the season with the Loons, where he posted a 1.93 ERA and 0.86 WHIP in five starts. Shortly after, he was promoted to the Quakes. He made 12 starts in Rancho, and never lost a start. He went 7-0, while posting a 2.14 ERA with a 0.97 WHIP. In 67 innings, he struck out 80 and issued only 13 walks. Gray was then promoted to AA, where he made eight starts for the Drillers. His ERA was a whopping 2.75, and his WHIP soared to 1.12. Obviously, I’m being sarcastic, as he was still the best pitcher in Tulsa.

Rounding out the list is Downs, who like Gray, came over to the Dodgers in that Puig trade. In 119 games between Rancho Cucamonga and Tulsa, he hit .276/.362/.526/.888 to go along with 24 home runs and 86 runs driven in. Most of his season was spent in Rancho, where he appeared in 107 games. His numbers increased during his short stint with the Drillers, where he hit .333 with an OPS of 1.116. Downs played both second base and shortstop, but spent majority of his time playing shortstop.

Here’s a look at the updated list of the Dodgers’ top 30 prospects.